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  We went back inside and she got a large jar of pills and brought them out. “Antibiotics,” she said.

  “Jesus, that’s certainly the economy version,” I said.

  “You can buy them like that here. Not like in the States.”

  “Do you go to the States often?”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “I lived there once. I studied archaeology at the University of Texas. Austin.”

  “I’ve always been interested in archaeology.”

  She gave me a curious eyeballing.

  “Seriously,” I said, and told her about having done some digs here and there when I was young, Caddo Indian stuff in East Texas mostly. I had been the shovel boy for a nice amateur archaeologist named Sam Whiteside. She talked about going to the University of Texas, then the University of Mexico, and how she had graduated with a degree in anthropology and archaeology.

  She got some water and the pills and took them to Leonard. He was sweating slightly and had a fever. He was only partially awake.

  “These,” she said, shaking the jar of pills, “should get the infection down. He has not lost much blood. Tomorrow, he rests some, eats, then you go.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to think too far ahead.

  “We’ll give him the pills now,” she said.

  “But not all of them?”

  She smiled. “Not all of them. Just a few.”

  “Leonard,” I said, waking him. “Time to take your medicine.”

  I supported his head on my arm while Beatrice gave him the pills and held the glass so he could sip water. When that was finished, I lowered Leonard back onto the bed and he went to sleep immediately. Beatrice blew out the light and we went out of there.

  In the kitchen she lit the lamps and poured some water from a pitcher into a basin, gave me a bar of lye soap. I used it to wash my face and hands. When I was finished, she handed me a towel.

  “We do not have many conveniences,” she said. “I had nice things in the States, but here my father is very poor and he lives as he has always lived.”

  “That’s quite all right,” I said. “I thank you for helping us.”

  She opened a metal box on a shelf and took out a loaf of long, brown, home-baked bread. She split it down the middle, made slices from that. She removed a big cake of flaking cheese from the storage box, cut slabs from it, put them on the bread. She poured wine from a bottle into two fruit jars and gave me one of the jars. I don’t really like wine, but I wasn’t about to be rude. Not after all she and her father had done for us.

  We sat in some old but comfortable chairs at a cheap table supported by wobbly aluminum legs and ate our bread and cheese and drank our wine.

  The bread was full of flavor, and the cheese was sharp. I even found I liked the wine. At that point, however, having not eaten in some hours, I think I might have enjoyed a steaming slice of dog shit on a roof shingle.

  As we ate, we talked. “I earned my degree,” she said, “but I never used it. I came back here when my mother died to take care of my father. I have been here ever since.”

  “Your father looks like a capable man to me,” I said.

  “In many ways he is, but he cannot take care of himself at home.”

  “Maybe he can,” I said.

  She smiled at me. It was a lovely smile. “You don’t understand what’s expected of me.”

  “By your father?”

  “By my past. I have been raised to do the woman’s work.”

  “You went to the university. That’s certainly a modern enough approach. Does your father expect it of you? Staying home, I mean?”

  “No. But I expect it. I feel I’m failing if I do not do it. I know I do not have to, yet I do.”

  “Maybe you should change your thinking.”

  “My thinking is changed, but my doing is the same.”

  I smiled at her. “That’s one way to put it. Do you work on the fishing boat?”

  She nodded. “And do other things. I go on the boat to keep from staying here. No one lives near here. There is nothing to do. I do not like the boat, but I have my father there, and I can keep busy with the baiting, the cleaning of the fish.”

  “I assume you sell the fish.”

  “Yes. What do you do? Are you on vacation?”

  “I’m a security guard at a chicken plant.”

  She grinned wide, and she looked very beautiful when she did that. It gave her deep dimples. Her eyes were bright in the lamplight. I loved the way she spoke English, the way her accent curled around the words and made them sexy.

  We talked for a long time. She poured more wine. I meant not to drink it, but I was geared up and nervous. By the time I finished the second jar of wine, I was beginning to feel a little sleepy.

  She told me about her life and her disappointments, and they were all tied to tradition and how her mother had lived and how she had tried to break away from it, but couldn’t. It had stayed with her like a disease. She loved her mother and what she had done, but didn’t feel it was for her – and yet, here she was, in many ways taking her mother’s place. A woman over thirty and not getting younger and feeling she was missing out on the world.

  “There is never any money,” she said. “My father cares little for money. He works. He makes enough to feed us, to get oil for his lamps, a few items here and there. He wants nothing else. He sells his fish too cheap. He does not have money, he does without. It does not bother him.”

  “But it bothers you.”

  “I do not ask to be rich, but I would like to have nice clothes. Some things. Is that so bad?”

  “No,” I said. “It isn’t. Fact is, I haven’t had all that much myself. It’s my fault. You can want too much, but you can want too little as well. I think I’ve wanted too little. Your father, he seems content, and that’s fine. But it’s all right you want something more. I think he could do without you, he had to. He seems independent.”

  She smiled at me, reached to take my glass, touched my hand. She leaned forward, stared at me. “Would you kiss me?”

  It didn’t seem like a chore. “Yes I would,” I said, and did. I liked it so much, I did it again. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the next moment she was out of her chair and in my lap, and we were kissing deeply. She smelled good, her hair was soft, and her lips were sweet.

  Still, part of me felt bad about the whole thing. Sort of like I was cheating on Brett. But Brett had gone her own way. I had no reason to feel guilt. No reason at all.

  Another part of me felt as if I were taking advantage of a lonely woman who had had too much wine, but that part wasn’t speaking too loudly. Hell, I had had too much wine.

  I kissed her deeply. She ran her hand between my legs and took hold of me and squeezed, and soon I had her in my arms and was carrying her to the empty bedroom. I laid her on the bed and helped her undress, pulling her shoes off, her jeans, her sweatshirt over her head, unfastening her bra and removing her panties.

  I stood by the bed and removed my clothes and removed my wallet and took out a prophylactic and gave it to her. She laid it beside her. I climbed onto the bed. She stroked me and finally took the rubber from the package and slipped it over me, then she spread her legs and took hold of her knees and pulled them up so that they were damn near touching her ears.

  I entered into her, and in spite of the prophylactic, it felt so good, and it had been so long, I almost came on the spot. It was tempting to just go ahead and let it go, but I fought being selfish. I did the times tables for a while, till they got beyond me, then I tried to remember how to cook a couple of Mexican dishes and thought about the theme songs from favorite TV shows, finally got hold of myself. Then I was relaxed, making love, keeping control on my needs, administering to hers. She knew just how to coax me along, knew what to whisper in my ear, where to put her fingers, how to touch me.

  We did it in that position for a while, then she rolled over and I took her from the rear.

  Finally, to both our satis
faction, we finished in the traditional position, her letting go first, then me.

  It wasn’t as wild as it was with Brett, who could do more tricks with a six-inch dick than a monkey could with a hundred feet of grapevine, but Beatrice’s love-making was slyer than Brett’s, calculated as if by script.

  She was certainly a woman of experience, and it was exactly what I needed, and from all observation, what she needed as well. As that ol’ Merle Haggard song goes, “It ain’t love, but it ain’t bad.”

  We lay together and I thought about the day. I had been on a cruise, off a cruise, seen famous ruins, been in a fight. My best friend had been knifed, we had been saved by a wild old Mexican with a machete who turned out to be very nice and had a lovely daughter, and Leonard’s awful hat had been destroyed. The lovely daughter had fed me and fucked me, and now I lay me down to sleep.

  I wondered what Brett was doing.

  Maybe what I had been doing.

  Wrong approach.

  I closed my eyes.

  I pulled Beatrice close.

  And wondered again what Brett was doing.

  No future in that.

  Finally, I slept.

  13

  Next morning I rose while Beatrice slept, dressed, went in to check on Leonard. He opened his eyes when I walked into the room.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Morning. My, you look happy. Been poundin’ the possum, ain’t you?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes.”

  “I can always tell. You have that smug look and the eyes get hooded, like Robert Mitchum.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. I said, “Now what?”

  “Well, now that you’ve had what you need, have taken advantage of a poor peasant girl-”

  “Hah.”

  “-I don’t think we want to stay here.”

  “Very good. But that isn’t exactly a plan. How’re you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been wiped, flushed, and I’m on my way out to sea. I’m bored enough to collect farts and name them, yet I don’t feel like I could do much. I’m lucky I had good stomach muscles, or I’d be dead.”

  “You’re lucky he had a short knife,” I said. “Your stomach muscles aren’t that good.”

  “And yours aren’t good at all.”

  “What I have are table muscles. They’re more subtle. Look, I’ll see if Beatrice will take us into town. Maybe we can make a phone call there.”

  “How would we get out of here? Get back to the U.S. Pontoon boat?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Question is, are you up to it?”

  Leonard tried to rise, said, “You know what? I’m not up to it.”

  “Then we better not arrange a way out yet. You don’t need to travel, you feel that bad.”

  “You don’t hear me fighting with you.”

  “Then you are hurt,” I said. “I’ve never known you to give in to me that easy.”

  “You got a point, bucko.”

  “Lie down. I’ll see I can rustle you up some breakfast.”

  I left out of there, discovered Beatrice was up and moving toward the kitchen. I followed. She smiled at me.

  “Last night was very good,” she said.

  “Yes it was.”

  “It meant something to me, but I do not want you to think it meant everything. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Are you hungry?”

  “I am. And so is Leonard.”

  “How is he?”

  “Better, but not up to snuff. I know you want us to leave out, Beatrice. And we will. But maybe another day or two for Leonard to rest.”

  Suddenly she became very hard. “One more day. No more than that.”

  “Fine,” I said. “One more day.”

  She put some grounds in a pot and started coffee. It was so dark and rich with aroma it made my nose hairs quiver. I had a feeling it wasn’t decaf. She located some more bread and cheese and took it to Leonard. We sat in the room with him and ate the same. Beatrice brought us cups of coffee. After two cups I felt as if I had been blackjacked and ass-kicked.

  In spite of the food and coffee, Leonard drifted back to sleep. Beatrice smiled at me. She wiggled her finger for me to come, stood up, and went out of the room.

  We went back to her bedroom and went to bed. We made love one more time. I was lucky she wasn’t like Brett. I wouldn’t have had enough rubbers.

  At least it had been that way for a while.

  After we lay together for a while, Beatrice led me out on the back porch and showed me how a shower was set up there with a pull chain. The water was in a big tin reservoir. It was put there by the rain and sometimes brought in from outside, but there was only so much water, she said, so we showered together. Which wasn’t something I considered a drawback.

  As I soaped her up in the pink morning light her breasts, damp with the water from the homemade shower, were dark and slick under my touch, and the thick nipples were tantalizing. I liked the way the soap foamed over them and the way the water plastered her hair to her head, which in the light of day I could see held streaks of gray. I liked the way the water beaded in her pubic hair. Her eyes were deep and dark, her face was full of an expression that showed me there was plenty to like and a lot that was hard to understand. She was a real mystery. I liked that. I liked it so much I kissed her.

  About two that afternoon I helped Leonard make it out to the outdoor convenience, stood by outside while he finished, trying to stand far enough away I didn’t have to hear the usual bathroom sounds.

  “It’s great to have a valet,” Leonard called through the toilet walls.

  “Yeah, well, just don’t ask me to wipe your ass for you.”

  “Hap?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a Mexican catalogue in here.”

  “It’s Mexico, you moron.”

  “I mean, that’s what you wipe your ass with. Pages from it.”

  “Ouch.”

  Back in the house, Beatrice, dressed in a simple white cotton dress with red and purple flowers stitched on it, searched through her shelf of books, found Leonard a book in English, Andrew Vachss’s Dead and Gone, left it with him along with a bottle of water, bread and cheese, and a cup of coffee.

  She and I drove into town so I could try and make some kind of arrangements to get home. As we drove along with the sand blowing up and making clouds on the road, she said, “I was supposed to be at the boat this morning, to help.”

  “What are you going to tell your father?”

  “I will not tell him that I was servicing you.”

  “I hear that. Hey. Wasn’t I servicing you too?”

  “You were. You did good.”

  “Great. Good dog. Want me to fetch your slippers?”

  Beatrice laughed her musical laugh.

  “Will he be mad?” I asked.

  “No. He does not make me work on the boat. It is as I said last night. I feel obligated.”

  “Thanks for going against your obligation this morning.”

  “That is all right. Even the obligated must have, how do you say it, ashes hauled?”

  “Close enough. But, you know, I hate it for your father. I mean, he helps us out, then we mess up his schedule. I make love to his daughter.”

  “He likes to take Jose out. Jose goes with him often. Jose or his brothers. He enjoys being able to give them a little money. They are even poorer than we are. Father catches quite a few fish. But if he caught all the fish in the ocean, he would only make so much money. It is not a rich life, the life of a fisherman.”

  “I hear that.”

  In town we stopped at a little cafe near the dock. Outside the cafe the smell was briny and strong of fish. Inside the cafe there was the smell of cooking fish, and that unique smell of hot sauces and fresh tortillas.

  I used some of the money I had to treat Beatrice to lunch, reminded myself to stop by later and get something for Leonard.

  We had spicy fish with beans
and rice and tortillas. As we ate, I halfway expected one of the cops from across the bay to come in, but that was probably just fearful thinking. Even though the towns of Playa del Carmen and Cozumel were separated only by water, it was enough water unless the renegade cops made regular pilgrimages here.

  When we finished, Beatrice had coffee while I found a pay phone that worked near the restaurant and called John’s number using my calling card. I got the answering machine. I left a message outlining briefly what had happened. Where we were.

  I called Charlie.

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, Hap. You gettin’ any cruise ship pussy?”

  “No. Actually I’m in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.”

  “Hey, getting any senorita pussy?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Female chihuahuas don’t count.”

  “You’re just as funny as clown shoes.”

  “Hey, I know it.”

  “Listen. I got a little problem.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “No. Nothing like that. Not the usual.”

  “Anybody dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  I gave him the shortened version of events.

  “Damn. Is Leonard bad?”

  “Not bad, but hell, he took a knife. No little thing. It could have been a lot worse. It’s a small cut, not too deep. Which is a good thing. This isn’t exactly a medical Mecca here.”

  “You guys. You’re somethin’. You could fuck up a wet dream. What do you need?”

  “Well, mainly I wanted you to know what happened to us. And I think I’m going to need some money wired until I can get to my money on board the ship. Then I can pay you back.”

  “How much you need?”

  “Well, we’ll have to arrange for plane tickets. Stuff like that. I’ve got some money. But, since I’m not certain how long Leonard’s going to have to recoup, if we’re going to have to take a hotel or not, maybe a couple thousand. Three would be better.”